Can we separate addictiveness from social media (and app) design?

Before my recent entrepreneurial ventures, I worked at Facebook. I worked on the new Workplace by Facebook app(previously known as known as Facebook at work).

While there, I tried hard to help the software and the company grow, using my arsenal of skills—which spanned writing, growth marketing, analytics, conversion rate optimisation and more. It’s what I do. I figure out what needs to happen for software to grow and I figure out how to make it happen.

It wasn’t until I quit Facebook to work on my own company (a software app for fighting misinformation) that I was confronted with a spectacular conflict.

How do I get more people to use my app without trying to get them addicted to it?

Tempted as you might be, I implore you not to underestimate the significance of this tension.

Everything about the way software is designed today is optimised for getting you to use that piece of software as often as possible, for as long as possible. To have it as integrated into your life (or work… or both) as possible. We often talk about these problems in relation Facebook, Google and the other giants… but, the truth is, virtually every software company today is applying the same techniques. They have designers, growth marketers, software engineers, data scientists… and more. All that brain power directed towards actualising one goal—more people using their products, as often as possible.

Even in the world of business-to-business (B2B) enterprise software, this problem does not go away. Sure, people pay for these products and there’s no advertising… but there’s a different elephant in the room—“churn”. Many B2B apps operate on a recurring revenue model. That means you pay a fixed sum every month to retain access to the app. Guess what we in the industry have discovered? A lot of the time, the less you use an app, the more likely you are to stop paying for access to it. The cancellation of recurring payments by a customer is known as churn. So, we get to work figuring out ways to get more people using our apps, for longer. Using exactly the same techniques as the tech giants. A/B and multivariate testing. Predictive analytics. Lean experimentation. Feedback loops. Reward systems. Push notifications. And so on. Entire industries have germinated from the seeds of these methods.

Addictiveness is merely a consequence of applying these techniques as effectively as possible. When you remove as much friction as possible and stimulate the brain’s dopamine reward system as frequently as possible… what else do we expect?

If you want to get investors in your company, they’ll ask you about all these things too. Because these are the mechanisms that allow them to (more) confidently predict returns on their investments. “Are people using your product? How much? How many of them? What’s your churn rate? What’s your net revenue retention?”

Even you, the users, care! There are the concepts of social proof and network effects. These refer to the phenomena where people prefer to use products already being used by other people they trust (social proof) and people are more likely to use products that are already being used within their circles (network effects).

Virtually every dynamic at play within the software industry incentivises you to tap into people’s “lizard brains” (I’m aware the Triune Brain Theory is questionable but it’s evocative here) and make your product addictive.

The challenge here is the mentality of an industry, not the existence of specific companies. I am quite confident that if Google and Facebook were to vanish today, they’d be replaced quite rapidly. Most likely, by more diabolical actors (but that’s another conversation).

These techniques open backdoors to the most primitive parts of the human psyche, so we can stimulate desired actions more directly and predictably. The problem is we’re only partly in control (even though our hubris leads us to believe otherwise). And once we open the backdoor, other things can get in. Unintended things. Dangerous things. Things we would never consciously choose to inflict on the human mind. But once the damage is done, that’s irrelevant.

And I don’t mean to demonise the industry—I’m in it! And I like to think of myself as “one of the good guys” (although, that’s not for me to decide). These techniques have been adopted because they help well-meaning people bring their ideas to life—products that people, seemingly, love.

How can I, as an entrepreneur who believes in the goodness of my mission, choose not to do things that I know will help my company grow? Especially if I believe, like many do, that I’m not like Facebook?

“My app isn’t social software… no one’s going to get suicidal because of a sales CRM.”

“I just do bookkeeping for accountants, I don’t sell ads.”

“My app is designed to *fight fake news*… I don’t really see how it could lead to the same problems as social media.”

But that’s precisely the point—the founders of Facebook, Google and all the rest didn’t think their actions would lead to the negative consequences they have. They see themselves (understandably) as the good guys.

This is (partly) because humans tend to be bad at assessing higher order effects—that is, not just consequences or consequences of consequences, but the interactions between consequences to create (new) tangential causal chains. For example, I don’t think Beethoven could have imagined the interaction between his music, the electric guitar and heavy metal would create a genre called neoclassical metal.

I don’t think the creators of Instagram could have predicted the incipient spike in pre-teen self-harm and suicide, often associated with self-image issues resulting from social media use. And I don’t think the creators of Twitter dreamed of creating an app that encourages people to spread more misinformation than facts.

The reasonable rebuttal might come, “Not everyone can build a Facebook or Google. It’s really hard. Focus on growing your company and cross the higher-order-effects bridge if you come to it.”

But what if you (what if I) am one of the few that succeeds? And what if I succeed using these techniques? Which higher order effects will I unleash? By that point, it will be too late.

This is my challenge—and the software industry’s challenge. These mind-hacking techniques are the only effective ones we know of for growing modern software companies. I’ve been encouraged many times, by many people to aggressively introduce them into my own software app… but I’m reluctant. I’m worried. I’m conflicted.

I’m extremely passionate about mitigating the problem of misinformation. I believe I’ve devised an approach that can, at the very least, slow the rot. I’ve put years of my life into it. I’ve put tens of thousands of pounds into it. I want my app to succeed. I have an arsenal of skills that I can use to make it successful… but many of those skills carry risks we now understand to be potentially grave.

Reflect on this, Facebook would not be the giant it is today, had it not deployed many of the growth tactics it did. It would have been just another blip on the software landscape… like Hi5 or Bebo. What are Facebook, Google or any of the others supposed to do now—torpedo their growth? Regress their development? It doesn’t seem likely—not the least because each owes a legal duty to their shareholders to increase their company’s worth. I’m not counting on it.

There’s an aphorism to which I subscribed long before I joined Facebook, but it’s stuck all over the walls at its offices…

“The best way to complain is to build something better.”

One of my biggest missions with òtító is to figure out another model of growth… one that doesn’t require such high-risk manoeuvres as mind hacking.

I’ll probably fail (I’m not being pessimistic, it’s just statistically true)… but I might not. And you can hop on the ride for as long as it lasts. I want to share the things I learn and challenges I face along the way. And I’d love (I need) your ideas and feedback as I do. Part of the change that needs to happen has to come from us choosing to do things that are healthier, even if less instantly gratifying.

If enough of us do that, we may not need the whole world to stem the tide. And if, against the odds, I (or some other dreamer) succeed… then, what a time it will be to be alive.

P.S. If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma (on Netflix), you should. It was referred to me by someone aware of my work on òtító and inspired this article.